Up for auction "Theoretical Physicist" Kenneth Ford Hand Signed TLS.

ES-9785

Kenneth William Ford (born

May 1, 1926) is an American theoretical physicist, teacher, and

writer, currently residing in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania.

He was the first chair of the physics department at the University of California, Irvine,

and later served as president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and

Technology (New Mexico Tech) and as Executive Director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics. Ford was

born on May 1, 1926 in West Palm Beach, Florida, to parents Paul

Hammond Ford (1892-1961) and Edith Timblin Ford (1892-1992) and was the second

of their three children. He spent most of his childhood in Kentucky, living one

year in Georgia when he was eight and nine. Ford attended Highlands High School

in Fort Thomas, Kentucky from 1940 to 1942,

then Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH,

graduating in 1944. In 1948, he received an A.B. from Harvard University, graduating summa cum

laude. He received his Ph.D. in physics

from Princeton University in 1953, studying

under John Archibald Wheeler. During 1950-1952

he interrupted his graduate studies to join the H-bomb design team at Los Alamos National Laboratory

(then Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) and at Princeton University's Project Matterhorn.